


Pills and Potions

by PoliticallyObsessedScholar



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Abuse, Character Study, Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Gen, I'm not even kidding, Mental Health Issues, Self-Hatred, Self-Loathing, So much angst, i broke my own heart writing this, past overdose, references to possible suicide attempts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 17:15:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10035836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoliticallyObsessedScholar/pseuds/PoliticallyObsessedScholar
Summary: Everyone kind of hates Kent Parson, that's ok, he kind of hates himself too.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A previous version of this fic had a section in it where Kent acted as a white saviour. That has now been removed and I’d like to apologise for my unintentional racism.

_Dispatcher_ : 911, what’s your emergency?  
_Unk. Male_ : (hysterical) You’ve got to help me... my boyfr- he’s not breathing. Oh god. There’s vomit... I don’t know. He’s not breathing!

***

When Kent was five years old his family visited a cave filled with glow-worms. There was probably only twenty people there but he was small and it seemed like there were more. They’d climbed down a ladder and into a boat, floated out into the middle of this chain of underground caverns and lakes then turned off all the torches. It was pitch black and it was almost completely silent. His mother nudged him and told him to look up and for one glorious moment his breath was stolen.  

The sky was lit up with golden dots but he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, the most peaceful moment of his life. When they left he didn’t cry but only because his dad would have been mad.

Whenever things are too much he imagines he’s back in that cave, back in that moment where he felt completely alone and totally at peace.

He didn’t used to do that. In the Q he’d go somewhere loud and, usually, he’d drag Jack along. He’d go out into a crowd of too many people, with music pounding so hard he couldn’t hear his own thoughts, and pour alcohol down his throat. There were times he used money that Jack gave him and bought ecstasy from the ever present dealers. He’d tried weed once, because he thought that was safer, but it hadn’t made him stop thinking.

Or he’d go out onto the ice and shout insults until he was every ones target and he had to skate faster, better, meaner, just to survive. The blood would thrum in his head and there wouldn’t be any space left for thoughts. Sometimes he wouldn’t make it and then the pain would be there pushing away everything else. When they found out that they both liked boys, he would sometimes crawl into Jack’s bed and they’d chase that moment that everything stopped for one glorious minute and he could collapse boneless into sleep.

He hadn’t realised that it meant anything more to him than that until Jack overdosed. He didn’t realise a lot of things until Jack overdosed.

***

 _Unk. Man_ : Oh god... I should have - Jack! Jack!  
_Dispatcher_ : Sir, could you please turn him onto his side for me? An ambulance is on its way.  
_Unk. Man_ : (crying) ...ok, ok, he’s on his side. He’s still not breathing! Why isn’t he breathing? I didn’t kno-

***

Kent doesn’t like hotel bathrooms. His teammates chirp him about how quickly he moves if he has to use one but they don’t understand. Sometimes they just look too much like the one he found Jack in. There’d been a shower right at the back, a washbasin on the right, and a toilet on entry. Jack had been sprawled in the middle of the floor, his skin too pale and too cold, his chest immobile. He knows he called nine-one-one, knows that the paramedics took him to the emergency room too, but he can’t remember much else.

The entire night is a blur of his heart pounding, his body shaking, crying so hard he could barely think beyond it because Jack was dead, Jack was dead and it was all his fault and he loved him and he hadn’t told him and he didn’t know how bad it was and now he was dead, dead, dead - It doesn’t matter how many years pass, hotel bathrooms always feel the same and for a split-second he’s hearing the dispatchers voice in his ear saying “can you breathe for me sir? The ambulance is on its way.”

All of which probably explains why he’s willingly sitting in a hotel bathroom struggling to breathe. He keeps trying to go to that glow worm cave but his head is filled with horrified stares from strange blonde boys and words that he spit out, hurting and wanting to hurt in return. When it’s not the blonde boy on the floor forcing out the tranquillity, it’s ice blue eyes that are hesitant and slightly unsure. He’s clutching at his head, his brain is trying to tear itself apart with the sheer force with which he’s thinking at once how much he hates himself-what a horrible human being he is-how he doesn’t deserve to be loved and the quieter voice saying him that one bad moment does not a bad human make. A hotel bathroom is exactly the right kind of place for this sort of thing.

The next day he wakes up on the bathroom floor, conveniently close to the toilet that his hangover demands. As he stands he notices that his head isn’t quite as loud anymore and when he stops and thinks about it he decides at least sixty-five percent of the reason why he went full-jerk was the amount of alcohol he’d consumed.

The day after Jack overdosed, he stopped taking drugs. He knew Jack hadn’t overdosed on ecstasy but he couldn’t stop seeing that body on the cold tiled floor.

The day after he woke up with bruises all over his body, a sore throat, and a smirking blackmailer calling him slut, he stopped having sex to forget.

The day after Epikegster 14, he stopped drinking alcohol and sent Jack an apology. He’s pretty sure Jack won’t read it.

***

 _Dispatcher_ : Could you start performing CPR on Jack, sir?  
_Unk. Male_ : (shaking breaths) one... two... three... four...  come... on... come... on...  one... two... three... four...  please... please... please... please...  one... two... three... four...  don’t... leave... me... jack...  one... two... three... four...  please... come... on... please...  one... two... three... four...  wake... up... jack... please...

***

The thing is, Kent has a reputation and he might not be participating in ninety-percent of his old scene but he still likes it. So he goes out and parties but he drinks coke and water, not rum. He wears snapbacks and claps back with a smirk. He plays aggressively on the ice and shrugs if someone gets hurt. He plays Britney and puts all his pictures of Jack in a box at the top of the cupboard.

He’s made it to a 36 game point streak, he’s led his league to the Stanley Cup and he’s won the Art Ross, Conn Smythe, the Calder, and the Hart Memorial (twice consecutively). Yet when he faces off against the Providence Falconers all anyone can ask about is him and Jack and all Jack says is that it’s in the past.

For one blinding moment all the pain and confusion and hurt of his years surviving a life without Zimms hits him and then all he can think about is reminding Jack that he matters. That Jack was technically dead for a few minutes and he’s the one who saved his life, that maybe they were idiot teenagers making like Icarus and flying too high too fast, but he deserved more than he got. So he pushes himself and his momentum runs him into the goal and then the bottom of a hockey fight. When Mashkov picks him up and shakes him and calls him a little rat the only thought running through his head is that it fucking figures.

Then he goes home, pours himself glass after glass of soft-drink that he pretends is alcohol, blasts Toxic, and watches Zimms post-game interview.

His life gets worse, as it tends to. He wakes up to a faux calm call from his agent - his Dad’s done some interview which paints him as an entitled kid who got rich and famous and now thinks he’s too good to spend time with his family. She tells him to sit tight and say nothing and he does but watches as the story gets picked up by tabloid after tabloid, then Deadspin, and then inexorably all the talking heads.

At practice the next day he’s getting disapproving looks from his teammates and pointed conversations about the value of family. He wonders what they’d say if they knew his dad used to beat his arse black and blue for talking back, used to make him live in fear and terror, told him he was stupid and worthless and a horrible son. He wonders what they’d say if they knew that the first night at his billet house he cried because he was so happy he wasn’t living at home.

He wonders what they’d say if they knew he used his first signing bonus to try and buy his mum a place of her own that she could flee to but she told him how much she loved his father and that he just had issues, that despite the fact he’d shaken her so hard she bruised two weeks previous he really was trying to change. He wonders what they’d say if they knew that he gave that house and security guard to his younger sister when he was twenty and she was sixteen years old and terrified out of her mind.

Then he laughs and shakes his head. He already knows. They’d tell him what almost every movie and book and talking head does, that he’s still his father and there is value in forgiveness and mercy and being the bigger person. They’ll trot out the same trite stories about fathers who broke down and cried and apologised after the child continued to act like a fucking martyr. If he’s lucky they’ll want to immolate him for him but he’s not holding his breath.

***

 _Unk. Male_ : Oh my God his pulse gone! Zimms, Zimms, stay with me! Zimms you can’t die on me! Why aren’t you breathing? You can’t do this, he can’t do this! I love him! Oh God I love him. Jack, Jack, wake up! I’m sorry, ok, I’m sorry. Wake up and we’ll go on a date, like you wanted, yeah? Wake up! Why aren’t you waking up? Why isn’t he waking up? I’m sorry - I’m sorry! What do I do? What do I do? Help me!

***

Kent is the Captain of the Las Vegas Aces. He laughs and claps-back to the press. He’s seen out at casino after casino. He walks around with a laugh hidden in the corner of his mouth, a wink at the ready, and he’s perfected the Flynn Rider smoulder. He plays hockey to prove that he deserved to be drafted first, to put to rest all those doubters who said that he was the second choice, the Johnson to Jack’s Kennedy.

That doesn’t stop him from being sure that he is in fact the second choice, that he was only drafted because Camelot went down in flames.

He’s the most popular guy on the team, he’s the life of the party, the guy everyone else turns to when they want advice that doesn’t sound like advice. He’s always up for a prank or a joke. He’s learnt that the instant he leaves the confines of his house he’s playing a role, the trickster, the  perfect blend of Algernon Moncrieff and John Worthing.

Fuck, yeah he’s read Wilde. He fucking loves Wilde.

(He’s also found himself listening to a podcast on Wilde’s trial, reading De Profoundis, then sobbing about it to Kit Purrson at 3am. He has strong feelings.)

Every time someone talks to the press about what a genuine guy he is, about how what you see is what you get, Kent feels another part of himself die slowly inside. He’s also read Judith Butler and he’s fairly sure he’s got the whole gender performance down pat.

Nobody on the team knows that he’s read Judith Butler.

They also don’t know about the Voltaire and Aristophanes in his library.

They don’t know about his library.

They don’t know that he listens to LSE lectures when he runs and subscribed to The Economist.

They don’t know that he’s gay.

They don’t know that he’s actually a horrible person. That he knows how to break and burn, how to manipulate and smile and make you think everything was your idea. He’s constantly looking at the world, working out how to get ahead, how to make everyone dance to his tune.

He knows that if he shows up at the doctors office with his snapback slightly tilted, his eyes just a tad too innocent, his smile flickering before settling, he can get anything he wants.He knows that if he tidies up his table at his favourite cafe before he leaves, he gets free coffee the next time because the waitresses just love him. He knows that if he leans against the door of Harold Watts - the sports reporter down at the local newspaper - and claps him on the back before walking with him through the pen, leaning in just so, he’ll write whatever Kent wants. Poor Harold just wants a little attention.

He only ever uses this knowledge to help but Kent knows that even knowing these things, especially using them, makes him the worst kind of human being.

He tries to absolve himself of every failing, tries so hard to be a good person, but he knows he’ll never be.

***

 _Unk. Male_ : Hey, Zimms, remember last week? The lake yeah? Remember what you promised me? You’ve got to stay with me, you promised remember. Just hang on Jack. I’m so sorry I didn’t know how bad it was, I’m so, so, sorry. How long does it take the fucking ambulance to get here?

***

Looking back, he doesn’t know at what point the last of his self-loathing fell away. He doesn’t know exactly when the thought that the only reason why his teammates thought he was such a nice person was because they didn’t actually know him started to feel slightly false.

Maybe it was after the first couple of weeks bringing Plato, or Mary Beard, or Thoreau to practice and not being hated for it.

Maybe it was after Jack wrote an open letter to his younger self where he talked about how much his best friend had helped him, how much he’d hidden from him, how his best friend had saved his life.

Maybe it was after he marched in Las Vegas Pride and answered all the reporters questions about that decision by saying it was for his “friend Dorothy.” The reporters’ didn’t get it, other people did. He didn’t come out, he couldn’t do that, but he managed to move himself into the glass closet and he’s pretty happy with that.

Maybe it was after a session with his therapist where he broke down in tears thinking about what he’d say to one of his Little Brother’s if they thought the same things he did.

Maybe it was that on that one glorious day he locked himself in an exercise room, stuck a photo of his father on the wall, and yelled at him for all the pain he’d caused and lies he’d told.

All he knows is that he still goes to that glow worm cave when he needs to, but he needs to less than before.

He thinks that means he’s ok.

***

 _Dispatcher_ : The Paramedics are at your address. Stay on the phone with me until they are next to you sir.  
_Unk. Male_ : Did you hear that Zimms? Help is here. Just hang on ok, they’re going to Help You. In Here! We’re in Here! Just hang on Jack Hang -  
_Paramedic_ : Sir, if you could step away -


End file.
